


She Winged Me

by birdthatlookslikeastick



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Crack, Other, Wingfic, not so much "wingsfic" though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-10 23:24:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7012390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdthatlookslikeastick/pseuds/birdthatlookslikeastick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My name is Mike Hanson. My story is a long one. It might sound a bit implausible. In fact, you probably won't belive it but I'll tell you anyway. See, the other day I got shot and a six-foot-long bird wing sprouted out of my left shoulder blade....</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Winged Me

One morning, Mike Hanson woke from troubled dreams. He found himself transformed in his bed into a cop with one magnificent feathered wing protruding from his left shoulder blade.

Well, not exactly. In truth, the wing had sprouted two weeks ago, and he'd been off on long term medical leave since then—and if you spend enough time mainlining Netflix, incapacitated by a useless wing sticking out of your back, then you do tend to be drawn to the Kafka documentaries. 

Hanson went to roll over in bed, and remembered at the last minute that he couldn't. _How do birds even sleep_ , he thought. _Am I gonna have to get a roost?_ He needed a coffee. Blearily, he hauled himself out of bed like a half-assed phoenix rising out of the fire pit, and lurched in the general direction of the coffee pot.

Mug in hand, he gazed out his kitchen window at his neighbour's completely boring suburban house, and went over the events of the past two weeks, as he had done a thousand times since the Sprouting Of The Wing.

***

"Stop! Police! Drop your weapon!"

Hanson’s shout barely carried over the noise of the brutal storm overhead. Gabriella Wright, a small-time hustler who had gotten out of her depth in a counterfeiting scheme, stood with her back to the edge of the building and her gun drawn. She and Hanson stood facing one another, twenty feet apart, while Jo covered him from the safety of the stairwell.

He and Jo had been on the case for days. They had finally tracked Wright down, late on a Thursday evening to an apartment in Brooklyn—which was when Wright decided to make a run for the roof. 

Wright didn't drop her weapon.

As Hanson and Wright faced off, he felt the wind pick up slightly, and then his hair start to stand on end all over his body.

He didn’t remember a lot from eighth grade science class, but feeling like someone had dragged him across the carpet and shoved him in a pile of fresh crackling dry laundry while standing in the middle of a thunderstorm on top of the highest building in sight… That probably wasn’t good.

Uh-oh.

His eyes caught a movement low overhead, and he glanced up, unwisely. A sparrowhawk, flying low overhead. It gave a piercing cry, and then two things happened at once.

One: Wright shot him, through the chest.

Two: he was struck by a lightning bolt.

What were the chances, right?

When he came to—which he really ought not to have done, by all rights—he was lying on his side. Jo was kneeling over him wearing an expression made of equal parts dread and incredulity. He wasn't bleeding—or, somehow, even injured. He felt dazed, to be sure, but otherwise fine. Except that there was a six-foot-long, luxuriously feathered wing sticking out of his left shoulder, which had busted out through his shirt and was stretched limply across the roof of the skyscraper. The feathers were sodden from rain.

The suspect had fled down a second stairwell, but that didn’t even rate on the list of bad things happening with his night.

Jo, bless her, dashed down to ground level and picked up an enormous trenchcoat from a nearby thrift store. Hanson, in some shock, waited for her at the top of the stairs. He tentatively reached out and felt his new, soft feathers, certain that he was hallucinating until he felt them. He stretched his wing out to the left, shaking some of the water off it. It felt utterly natural to do so, as though he'd always had the muscles.

 _This is stupid_ , he thought. _Who only gets one wing?_

***

Jo had driven him home. Luckily the trenchcoat more or less covered it up, and equally luckily the wing was on his left side, so he could kind of stuff it back between the front seats of the car. Driving was going to be an issue. Heck, most things would be an issue.

He hadn't slept for two days, preferring to lie on his side on the couch in the spare bedroom, his wing draped over the back of the sofa, watching television. Eventually he passed out there from sheer exhaustion, but woke up and picked up where Netflix had paused. He discovered the Kafka documentary on Day Four. It really spoke to him.

Karen, at first, tried to get him to go and see a doctor, but there was no way in hell Mike Hanson was leaving the house looking like he did. Heck, the only things he could wear were a bathrobe, or an XXL trenchcoat, both of which gave him the figure of an oversized Igor. 

After a while Karen gave up on the doctor angle and just tried to get him to talk. That was nice of her, he supposed, and she probably was worried sick. But at the same time, Hanson considered himself more of a man of action, and he really didn't have all that much small talk in him at the best of times. He wanted to sit and lick his wounds in manly silence—or straighten his pinfeathers, or whatever surly pigeons did on a bad day.

She did manage to get him to eat some soup after a couple of days and, somehow, keep the boys out of his hair for the most part. He suspected that the Playstation was involved. But he couldn’t dodge the evening bedtime story. When you're a father, there's a lot you can miss without your kids being too much the worse for it. If you don't toss the ol' pigskin around for a few days, they get over it. But you _don't_ miss the evening bedtime story. It's not done.

Their curiosity hadn't been easily sated, and they found plenty of opportunities to exercise it. Hanson would often catch the little Hansons staring in wide-eyed fascination at their father's new wing.

"Can you fly now daddy?" asked Donnie as Hanson fixed himself some toast.

"Shut up, stupid," said Ronnie. "You need two wings to fly."

"Ronnie..." Hanson subconsciously raised his wing in a dominance display of paternal authority.

"You shut up!" retaliated Donnie, shoving Ronnie into the large potted philodendron and dashing out of the room. Ronnie followed hot on his heels, cursing with prodigious ability for his age. 

And that was that.

Later, they asked him whether it hurt, and whether he had to preen, and could he reach the top shelf with the wing without having to stand on a chair like he used to. He didn't know. He didn't care. He was a New York detective with one six-foot wing, and all he knew was that he was out of a job unless he could learn to deal with it.

***

Reece came by after a week. She raised her eyebrows at Hanson's choice of attire—jeans and a bathrobe, as nothing else really fit anymore, save the trenchcoat. He invited her in and Karen fixed them a coffee, then put out some store-brand lemon creme cookies on the table and left them alone to talk.

"Well, let's see it, Mike.”

To Reece’s credit, she kept her composure reasonably well. They sat in silence for a while, sipping their coffee. In the distance, there was a shriek of victory as Donnie bested Ronnie in their video game, followed by muttering, and then ominous silence. Hanson had the suspicion that a dare had just been issued.

"Jo's worried about you," said Reece eventually. "Everyone's worried about you." Hanson grunted his acknowledgement, and Reece pressed on. "Mike, you should come in, if you feel up to it. Can you walk?"

"I'm fine, Lieutenant, I feel fine. But I don't know if I want the folks in the office to see me like this. Nobody'd take me seriously."

"We're police officers, Mike. Sometimes cops get hurt in the line of duty. You're not the first, not even the precinct's first. They'll get over it." She paused. "I think there are some there that need to see you make a recovery."

Hanson sighed heavily. He leaned his elbows on the table and grabbed a lemon creme cookie, prying it apart to get at the flourescent yellow goo inside.

"I dunno, Lieu, I just don't... AIEEE! WHAT THE FU- WHAT THE HECK?"

Hanson tossed his cookie in the air as he jumped in pain. He caught his recoiling wing, cradling it.

Ronnie sprinted away cackling, clutching one of his father's long wing feathers. 

Hanson turned to Reece, who had discreetly covered her mouth with her hand.

"Changed my mind. How soon can we go?" He paused. "No, wait, I can only wear trenchcoats and bathrobes..."

"Try this on, " called Karen from across the room. She was seated at her mother’s old sewing table, which ordinarily did not get used at all, but the piles of stuff had been cleared off it and Karen was holding a large men's dress shirt. A large, vertical slit had been cut into the back, neatly hemmed.

“Thank you, high school home economics classes,” Karen said with a smile.

***

Hanson stalked into the precinct, clad in his enormous trenchcoat. Jo was hard at work at her desk, but her face broke into a broad, relieved grin. "Mike," she said. "It's good to see you."

"Same, Jo," said Hanson gruffly.

"So, uh, how's your, ah, condition?"

A pained expression crossed Hanson's face. “Do we gotta talk about it?"

"No, I suppose not.” Jo smiled. “But I've got some good news on the Wright case. I think I'm a step ahead of Gabrielle Wright again—I've been following leads on some of her lackeys in the smuggling ring, and I'm just waiting on one last piece of evidence from Henry..."

Despite himself, Hanson was immediately drawn into the details of the case, pointing at maps and poring over file folders. Reece, who had been surreptitiously watching from across the room, half-smiled to herself and turned back to her office.

After a few minutes, Henry Morgan burst into the room with Lucas trailing behind, pushing a heavy trolley of forensic equipment.

"Jo, I have some news you'll very much want to hear..." He stopped short. "Detective Hanson! This is unexpected!"

Hanson nodded briefly at Dr. Morgan. He might be able to put Jo off, but Dr. Fancy Pants wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to talk loud and long about it. He pulled the trenchcoat a little tighter around him and shrugged.

"Well, this ain't the first bullet I've taken."

"It is, respectfully, the first bullet you've taken to the heart, Detective."

"Can we get back to the case? I don't really like to talk about it."

"Of course," said Dr. Morgan. "Though it could be worse, I must say. Spontaneous scapular wing genesis, while embarrassing and completely unprecedented, is unlikely to be anywhere near as humiliating or, I might add, as painful, as any number of common skin ailments." Oblivious to Jo's frantic draw-the-finger-across-the-throat gesture, he went on. "Surely having a new appendage is better than dying from a bullet wound. Oh, there are much worse things that can happen from a bullet to the heart," he added, heavily. "There are tales of men surviving that and more, living an undying half-life without end, watching their friends and loved ones reaped one by one by the careless sickle of time…” He stared off into the middle distance, frozen for a long few seconds, and then smiled brightly. “Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. Lucas and I have analyzed the fiber samples taken from the crime scene..." 

Henry went on and announced his latest clever idea, to which Hanson paid no attention, because Henry was such an insufferable, pompous ass. He picked up someone's desk ornament—a bronze cast of the Angel of Justice. Hanson looked at its right wing with considerable envy.

Lucas sidled up to Hanson, saying "Say, I'm going clubbing this evening, try and meet some ladies. You wanna come along? I could really use a wingm—"

Hanson's knuckles tightened on the statue.

"You're going to want to stop talking," said Hanson quietly.

"O-kay!" said Lucas, and sidled back away from Hanson.

Henry had finished his brilliant denouement, with Jo hanging on his every word. So that was still happening... _sigh_.

"Great," she said. "We've got Wright this time. Let's move out. Henry, you stay here. Coming, Mike?"

Mike took in a deep breath, and let it out.

"Okay, but you're driving," he said.

***

They pulled up to a fairly nondescript suburban street—it could have been Hanson's street, though he got the feeling that people were a little more affluent around here. He couldn’t afford these kinds of houses on his salary. The houses were neatly kept, and the driveways each had one or two SUVs parked in them. Jo's old sedan looked out of place.

"The place is two doors down—the single-story house on the right side, with the big elm tree," said Jo. She frowned. "I have a strange feeling about the guy on the corner back there." 

"You think he was a spotter?"

"He placed a call as we passed. We're expected. Are you sure you're up for this?" 

"Yeah. Let's go in," said Hanson. 

Jo was a couple of steps back as Hanson strode towards the house, trenchcoat flapping, service weapon drawn. However, when they were twenty feet from the property, Gabriella Wright stepped out from behind the elm, raised a gun, and fired at Hanson.

She was a damn good shot, thought Hanson, as pain exploded in his chest and back. Jo returned fire, but hit the tree, sending splinters flying.

Hanson staggered back, but as he did, he felt the pain in his chest disappear. His arms were wrenched backward, and then his shirt and trenchcoat ripped wide open as a second wing erupted from his right shoulder blade. 

Hanson stood there, breathing deeply and discarding the tattered remains of his coat and shirt. His strong grey wings flapped gently; they had an elegant striped pattern, down to the tips of the broad, aerodynamic pinions. The world seemed to pause and go into grayscale; all eyes were on Mike Hanson.

Wright dropped her pistol, mouth agape, and ran. 

"All right," said Hanson. "Let’s hunt!”

He had taken to the air with a leap before he realized he had done it. With a few strokes of his muscular wings he was twenty feet in the air, and moving faster than he had ever done under his own power on the ground. Flying was the most amazing rush, and it felt so natural—as though, like riding a bicycle, it was something he'd done all the time in his youth, and he just needed to remember.

He let out an ear-curdling screech and descended, rapidly approaching Wright, who was sprinting as fast as she could across the suburban lawns. He folded his wings, went into a ballistic trajectory, and took Wright to the ground with a linebacker's tackle, shrieking out the Miranda rights declaration like a triumphant goshawk.

After cuffing her, he looked behind him, his wings sparkling in the summer evening light, and his chest heaving from the sudden exertion.

"Whaddya think of THAT, hey Jo? I had a mean defensive tackle, back in the day. Still got it!”

All the blood had drained from Jo's face.

He followed her gaze downwards, noting that his abs could probably use a little work if he was really going to go into the superhero business.

All around him, wide-eyed, curious faces peered out their front windows.

"Yeah, that was pretty awesome," Jo managed.

They waited for the backup to arrive. Neither had much to say.

It was taking a long time. A really, _really_ long time.

Hanson started jotting down his report, resting his pad on the hood of Jo's sedan. He let out an explosive breath as they heard the first distant sirens.

"Finally. I gotta be getting home really soon..." A dismayed expression crossed Hanson's face. "Aw crap, there's no way I'll be able to fit *two* wings into a car! How am I gonna get home? The sun’s setting!"

Jo looked him over, and then hesitantly pointed to the sky.

Oh. Right.

Five minutes later he was flying over the New York streets, wings spread wide and a steely dedication in his eye. Mike Hanson was back. Better than ever. And when Mike Hanson's in action, he does NOT miss the evening bedtime story.

***

Epilogue:

"Well, then, let's put it to the test, shall we, Detective Hanson?" Adam smiled, ugly and humorless, and almost casually threw the dagger at Hanson. The blade tumbled over and over, embedding deep into Hanson's chest.

"Oh, SHIT," screamed Hanson. 

The dagger disappeared, as though it had never existed.

A third lustrous wing erupted out of Hanson's left flank, just under his arm.


End file.
